At the end of August, dozens of fast-food workers went on strike in Seattle under the group Good Jobs Seattle, demanding a $15 minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is not the right solution, but it does highlight the tremendous difficulty of living in a high-cost city on a minimum-wage salary.
It’s impossible to think a $15 minimum wage is a good idea. Washington currently has the highest minimum wage at $9.19 per hour. (That’s nearly $2 more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.) Local experts have been quick to point out that raising the minimum wage would force the price of goods to go up and make minimum-wage employees even more expendable than they already are.
But even more impossible to think is how someone could raise a family as a single parent on minimum wage. A one-bedroom apartment in Seattle costs more than $1,000 per month three years ago, while that same apartment in Spokane costs almost half, at $602 a month.
The main problem is this: Flipping burgers at McDonald’s was never meant to be a full-time job to support a family on. Those types of jobs are ideal for teenagers and college students. The fact that adults with children need to work these jobs gives a clear and startling picture of what the current economic and educational climate looks like.
In an ideal world, people would work these jobs while attending college and then move on to higher pay. But the reality is, education is too costly (the average student graduates with $26,600 in debt) and the competition for jobs in Seattle is high, with 55 percent of the population holding a four-year degree (that’s compared to 19 percent in Spokane).
Access to education and the cost of living need to be addressed. In Seattle, a computer-science graduate can enter the booming technology workforce, making six figures. But Seattle is also home to many people who do not have the same opportunities. Those people still deserve a quality of life and the ability to afford the roof over their head.
Both Seattle and the federal government need to address access to education and the cost of living. By offering practical solutions, like financial aid and incentives to go back to school or low-income housing, people who work minimum-wage jobs will be able to afford to live here. But until that happens, their cycle of poverty will continue.
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